I think “being immature around alcohol” is an attitude that afflicts all universities. My campus newspaper had a front-page article a couple weeks backs calling out the campus pub for raising beer costs by a dollar and saying it was an unnecessary “cash grab”. To which I respond – beer isn’t a necessity; the “correct” price for it is whatever most people are willing to pay, i.e. the price that maximizes the pub’s profits. I’m totally in sympathy with arguments that things can be unreasonably overpriced when it comes to the poor not having access to necessities, but there’s no human right to cheap beer in any convention that I’ve read.Report

Though I was kind of sad when my alma mater switched from being a wet campus to a dry campus. That being said, I think there is a strong argument for universities to be wet over dry. There will be stupidity but once universities go dry, students tend to switch from beer to hard alcohol more and that causes more problems.Report

My undergrad alma mater had a pub on campus. It wreaked hell on my night class when I had that 6 hour break before it (and a 3 hour round trip commute, so I stuck around), but boy do I have fond memories of it.Report

It’s been quite a while since I attended or visited your university, but in the past there were two, possible three, bars that were run by the student union (one was in residence, so I don’t know if it was run by another committe), and a fourth run by the grad student union (or whatever it’s called).

One of the three student union bars was turned into a coffee house about 7 years ago (I’m guessing, somewhere between five and ten years ago) and went dry. As far as I know, that one wasn’t replaced. So the student union artificially capped (and reduced) the number of bars, limiting competition and granting them near-monopoly status. Further, the student union is supposed to be working for the students, not necessarily maximizing profits off their backs.

I don’t have an opinion on whether the price of beer should have been raised, but I can certainly see a reasonable argument being made against the decision.Report

We have two pubs currently that I know of – Oliver’s for the undergrads and Mike’s Place for the grads (though students of either group can attend either pub if they like). I don’t think there’s any student-union-owned cafe – there’s a Starbucks and several THs. Anyway, as the students can leave campus and go to a variety of bars within walking distance, it’s not much of a monopoly; though more so in the winter, I suppose.

If anyone’s got a near-monopoly on on-campus food, it’s Dining Services and not the student union – they run the Starbucks, the TH’s, and all the dining options on campus besides the two pubs. This is a far cry from my former uni (University of Victoria) where we had a corporate-owned cafeteria in the Unicentre and several different student-union-owned places for lunch (along with a bar) in the Student Union Building. And we had an on-campus consignment bookstore, which Carleton won’t allow the student union here to have because it would compete with the (overpriced) university bookstore.Report

There also used to be the Bree’s Inn beside Fenn Lounge in residence. But maybe it’s gone, too. Once Ontario eliminated OAC, I can see how a younger group of frosh might lead to the closing of the residence bar.Report

What’s really embarrassing is that the author of that piece was apparently drinking beer mixed with Malibu. I mean, seriously? Who in the hell does that? It’s a grotesque affront to the natural order.Report

Rage(tm) works on a points system, and as a Libertarian Activist of level (n), you only get so much of it (see table 23). Sure, there are exceptions, and sometimes a lucky d20 roll really goes your way, but still — you want to be careful with it.

Now, you can spend that Rage(tm) on the beer and Malibu in Your Very Own Red Plastic Cup. Or you can spend it on the hundreds of thousands who are arrested for nonviolent marijuana “crimes” every year.

My ally is Nerd Rage, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Nerd Rage around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.Report

I think they are largely coextensive. Many to most or all libertarians are nerds but not all nerds are libertarians.

I would argue that nerd rage (TM) is stronger because it is largely dealing with entertainment and lifestyle stuff over serious policy issues. A variant on Kissinger’s observation on university politics. The lower the stakes, the increase in brutality/rage/backstabbing, etc.

Every nerd has his or her sacred thing and any variance on said thing will produce nerd rage, nothing can calm nerd rage down. It is called fandumb for a reason sometimes.*

*Disclaimer/Admission: I used to be heavily into anime and was a strong member of my alma mater’s SF/Fantasy/Gaming club. For reasons unknown to me, anime immediately lost its appeal during my first year out of university. I still like Star Trek (though I am weird and DS9) is my favorite series but the excesses of fandom are odd to me. I have no desire to spend every weekend and holiday going to cons. Or any weekend or holiday really. Plus I never liked filk. Plus some nerd explanations really bug me. When Osama was killed, the NY Times ran a picture of a guy in his 20s celebrating by wearing a Captain America mask and shield. I thought this was inappropriate and proof of the silliness of “America, Fuck Yeah” attitudes. Someone I kind of know defended said guy by saying “He is probably just a really big nerd/kid and wanted to do something to celebrate and join in.” I’m still not convinced that being a big nerd is a good defense for that kind of immaturity.

I am also perplexed by the dominance of fandom in the zeitgeist now and the somewhat cultural conservative/snob in me wonders why everyone is sticking with their 12-year old comfort food. Where are the 20 and 30 somethings getting into art house cinema and experimental stuff? During my parents youth in the 1960s/70s, it seemed like there was a bit more of an expectation to try and like Art House. Where are the Bergmans, Truffauts, Goddards, Cassavettees, etc?Report

am also perplexed by the dominance of fandom in the zeitgeist now and the somewhat cultural conservative/snob in me wonders why everyone is sticking with their 12-year old comfort food. Where are the 20 and 30 somethings getting into art house cinema and experimental stuff? During my parents youth in the 1960s/70s

I think we are gradually abolishing the idea that there is any particular virtue to pursuing the higher pleasures rather than the lower. We’re a bunch of intellectuals in this site, but we are more likely to get Dungeons and Dragons, Terry Pratchett and Monty Python references (Dare I hope that there are Jim Butcher fans here?) than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky*. Hell I couldn’t tell one from the other even if you hit me in the face with one of their books.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with liking the things you mentioned.

However, I do find it troubling that many people in their 20s and 30s seem to be absolutely rejecting “high” culture or at least culture that is somewhat more difficult to appreciate. There is value in humanity when it can produce Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or deeply experimental artists like Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Robert Wilson, Judy Chicago, etc. Not everything has to be silly and easy to digest.

I still find long-form criticism like the New Yorker, New Republic, N plus One, Bomb, The Believer, etc to be highly valuable. I still think one of the most valuable things a critic can do is encourage people to seek out more obscure and difficult art.

I can’t help but think that when liberal and progressive sites like Think Progress are almost exclusively dedicated to fandom stuff on their culture pages, it is because they have been scared by the Palinistas for being out of touch urban elitists.

“Socialist in economics, liberal in politics, conservative in culture”-Daniel BellReport

In music, the opposite is also true. Rock bands like Spiritualized draw on avante-garde sources like Reich/Young/Riley/Glass; even more popular artists like Radiohead do the same, also drawing on Aphex Twin (ditto) and the like; Bjork and Timbaland were huge in the 90’s, despite productions that were often downright weird/experimental. High culture feeds low culture feeds high culture.

To the extent that high/difficult culture is being crowded out (I don’t know that I agree that it is – Nabokov’s Pale Fire is being discussed somewhere on the internet as we speak) I think this is more than balanced out by the infusion of high/difficult culture into low – something like Watchmen (the book) is undoubtedly a reaction to/deconstruction of low culture (comics/superheroes), but itself (or Sandman) is IMO almost as layered and ‘important’ as most any high culture you’d like to name.

Mainstream, non-1% culture has *always* been low culture – and, it’s often not as ‘low’ as it appears at first glance.Report

as per glyph, i would say that glass hasn’t been rightfully “experimental” for years, perhaps decades – but that the popular ear, even the lowest culture, has gotten downright weird in the past decade, especially in terms of distortion and rhythm.

more people than ever are into what was an “experimental” arena – drone and doom metal, ambient music of all stripes, grindcores of varying degrees of troo-ness, those that mix classical structures with drone/ambient – stars of the lid/winged victory for the sullen, etc. hell, godspeed you black emperor had a lot in common with glenn branca than the ramones.

this kind of categorization is a lot more about audiences than outcomes. i yield to no one in my love of the works of that fart sniffing irish genius, but he also understood that marketing, even to a niche, was really important in shaping how you got to eyes (and avoided prison terms/fines/bans for obscenity). most of the modernists did – especially those irish modernists who helped push the irish revival.

possibly unrelated, but i while i was outside making a phone call this morning i saw a young woman in a homemade darkthrone sweatshirt. this culture of ours is downright wacky.Report

I will rue the day when Cat Macros and Gifs are displayed in MOMA and the Guggenheim.

And I am not sure that is true. The modern artists (Cornell, Richard Serra, De Koening, Wayne Theobaud, and many more) will always considered part of high culture. Same with writers like Beckett and Joyce. Shostakovich was always high culture. They might have been rejected by a large part of the cultural establishment but no one would consider them to have ever been “low culture”. Same with filmmakers like Truffaut, Goddard, Bergman, etc. Were they ever considered low culture?Report

I will rue the day when Cat Macros and Gifs are displayed in MOMA and the Guggenheim.

And I will rejoice. They have as much worth as Pollock’s paint splotches, a few squares, or black stretches of canvas – which is to say, very little. But at least the occasional gif or macro is good enough to provoke a smile, which is more than can be said for much of modern ‘art’.Report

Hey, that’s pretty cool. You should have brought that one up when we were having the ‘Kinkade/impossible light’ convo with ND:

“It is the light that is sublime in Grey’s oeuvre – which is the most important innovation in religious light since the Baroque – and that makes the mundane beings in them seem sublime, in every realistic detail of their exquisite being.”

– Donald Kuspit, Professor of Art History and Philosophy at SUNY -Stony Brook

I tend to find arthouse cinema fairly pretentious and a lot less meaningful than it thinks it is. Ditto with most of modern art.

Classic literature is something entirely different and worthy of appreciation, but I wouldn’t expect to see a lot of blogs branching out in that area, simply because it’s been so heavily analyzed that it’s hard for anyone besides Lit majors to find something new to contribute to the discussion. And it’s less useful in terms of recommendations and sharing interests – everyone knows they ought to read Crime and Punishment, whereas I had only vaguely heard of The Sandman before Jaybird talked me into reading it (and it’s not exactly short on depth and complexity, either).

I suspect a substantial part of what’s been rejected is the idea that certain genres – science fiction, fantasy, graphic novel – are inherently “low culture” regardless of their actual quality and content. And that, in my view, is a healthy trend.Report

I generally think that pretentiousness is a very easy charge to level and make at something. And I often find that I have a hard time figuring out why things are considered pretentious?

Ozu produced domestic dramas about middle-class families being gently torn apart at the seams by equally compelling forces of modernity and tradition. Kurosawa made Samurai films and modern noirs for much of his career some of which were adapted from Shakespeare (Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well, Ran). Star Wars is basically an homage to Kurosawa’s the Hidden Fortress. Goddard got wonky and non-narrative so I will grant that he could be pretentious. Truffaut never struck me as pretentious. Neither does Rohemer or Bergman.

Likewise, I never quite understand why non-representative artists like the Abstract Expressionists always get labeled as pretentious. As I mentioned in another thread on the league, I find that it is Imperialistic propaganda of the Pre-Raphaelites to be pretentious. I strongly dislike their glorified and false paintings of courtly life from the Middle Ages. There is more reality and beauty in a Rothko painting than in the pomposity of seeing a lady crown a knight on his way to or home from Imperialist adventure.Report

The pretensiousness of contemporary art is not its supposed lack of realism. The pretensiousness rather lies in the fact that everything is Critical. Social commentary All. The. Time. The impression is that they are never off. they never do anything just for aesthetic pleasure. There may be exceptions, but that is the biggest impression I get.

And do you know what is even more irritating, the social commentary is often simplistic even in cases where they happen to make valid points.Report

The most interesting thing about the group is that they were all in love or lust with the same two women and used them as models in all their paintings.

I think that all art is social commentary of one sort or another. Even people who say they are doing “art for art’s sake” are engaging in a form of social commentary because it is generally a reaction against those who think art must be social commentary or useful in some way.

Now I think there is plenty wrong with the art world and social commentary and it can largely be illustrated by the career of Damien Hirst. Also Bansky to a more limited extent. I agree that in the world of high art prices there is a lot of insular “knowing” that can be alienating to people. Is Damien Hirst pulling a joke on his buyers or are the buyers pulling a joke on us/Damien Hirst?

I think you are being unfair by calling the social commentary of art to be simplistic. It sounds rather glib. It is glib to say that Picasso’s Guerenica can be reduced to “War is bad” or Edward Hooper’s Nighthawks is about the lonely and alienating nature of the modern city/life but this cheapens the viewer’s reaction and interaction to the work. There are real and raw human emotions in those pieces of art that reflect truth to the human condition and empathy towards human suffering and misery.Report

I think that all art is social commentary of one sort or another. Even people who say they are doing “art for art’s sake” are engaging in a form of social commentary because it is generally a reaction against those who think art must be social commentary or useful in some way

I’m not talking about people doing art for art’s sake. I’m talking about things like Tanjore paintings, woodcuts etc which middle class people buy to put on their walls because they look nice or the design elements fit with the theme of the room or because it depicts the life of Krishna well, or because every house should have a Gita Upadesam or a Ramar Pattabishegam

I think you are being unfair by calling the social commentary of art to be simplistic. It sounds rather glib. It is glib to say that Picasso’s Guerenica can be reduced to “War is bad

I’ll cop to being a bit unfair.

Picasso ain’t exactly contemporary.

this cheapens the viewer’s reaction and interaction to the work

The problem is that at least to me, a lot of the contemporary art pieces (like a lot of jazz and R&B) are themselves completely alienating.

Turner paintings on the other hand are the visual equivalence of an angelic chorus. Even the pseudo medievel pre-rafaelite stuff is engages that part of my brain which gives me pleasurable feelings when I look at something. Contemporary stuff doesn’t and it gets trying after a while.Report

In defence of what folks call Modern Art, in the words of Edgard Varèse: “the present-day composer refuses to die.”

What’s the difference between some pedestrian print of Shiva or Rama and the temples at Ellora? Time is the difference. We say art is classic when it’s survived the test of time. In all times, mankind has been making art and not much of it survived. The stuff that was loved and cared for made the journey.

I recall when I was small How I spent my days alone The busy world was not for me So I went and found my own I would climb the garden wall With a candle in my hand I’d hide inside a hall of rock and sand

On the stone an ancient hand In a faded yellow-green Made alive a worldly wonder Often told but never seen Now and ever bound to labor On the sea and in the sky Every man and beast appeared A friend as real as I

Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall When there wasn’t even any Hollywood They heard the call And they wrote it on the wall For you and me we understood

Can it be this sad design Could be the very same A woolly man without a face And a beast without a name Nothing here but history Can you see what has been done Memory rush over me Now I step into the sun Report

it’s not, like, “fun”, but he was pretty super awesome. same with o’connor. southern gothic is a mood altering kinda literature, generally pretty heavy on the goth.

“If people were reading Jim Butcher in addition to Faulkner, rather than instead of him, I’d agree.”

how do you know they’re not?

i dunno who this jim butcher character is, but i know a ton of book nerds with hella letters after their name and half of them are so harry pottered to shit and back i fear for their sanity.

point being, people are often wide and voracious readers against type. the stereotype of the literary snob with elbow patches on his tweed jacket, all clucking his tongue at anything with less than 600 pages or involving a plot, is so old it should be appraised on antiques roadshow, where it would be found to have little value because it is so dreadfully common, if not actually a reproduction of an earlier work.Report

I’m just going by how rarely Faulkner (Or Fitzgerald, or Hemingway, etc.) come up in discussions compared to Butcher or Grisham or Stephen King. TNC posts about Faulkner on occasion, and it’s often a good discussion, but it’s so damned rare.

clucking his tongue at anything with less than 600 pages

Huh. To me that says “bloated fantasy doorstop”. Gatsby and The Sound and The Fury are maybe half that size.Report

“I’m just going by how rarely Faulkner (Or Fitzgerald, or Hemingway, etc.) come up in discussions compared to Butcher or Grisham or Stephen King. TNC posts about Faulkner on occasion, and it’s often a good discussion, but it’s so damned rare.”

well, it is comparing modern day bestsellers with authors whose bestselling days were 70+ years ago. plus there’s a certain formality to the notion of “the classics” that is lacking from modern works of fiction. not a ton of leopold bloom fanfiction running about; bloomsday is probably as close as you’ll get.

there’s a feeling that one has to know their stuff in order to make observations about faulkner that isn’t accompanied by something by stephen king, even if the analysis comes from the same direction or targets the same themes.

there’s also the distortion effect of the internet at play – there’s a lot of lit blogs out there, but unless you go looking for them you’re not going to find them. for more popular blogs, if you’re going to write about literature, contemporary works are going to get you more hits than those that are decades old, unless you have something particularly unique or outrageous to say.

hell, if you threw a dart at the internet, you might come to believe that firefly is one of the most popular television shows ever made and libertarians are 35% of the population.Report

The first time I was asked that question, I slapped my forehead and threw together a completely different Quentin/Dalton story with the other one but that only resulted in someone asking for Quentin/Quentin/Dalton and that just creeped me out.Report

Wait, what? You still buy books on actual paper? What is this, the dark ages?

I resisted a Kindle for a long time. But my personal library (and my wife’s) was taking over the house. I was — and am — literally out of room for books. Now that I have a Kindle? You’ll pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

I don’t have my whole library on Kindle (not being, you know, ridiculously rich). We have maybe 200 books between us on Kindle (we share an account). I’m slowly adding my old library to my Kindle, and any new books go there.

So everywhere I go, I have my entire library in a lightweight Kindle that lasts two weeks between charges. And if I forget it, I can always read on my phone.

All of Jim Butcher’s stuff I have on Kindle (Codex Alera and Dresden Files). Pratchett just his newer stuff (I shall Wear Midnight, Snuff, The Long Earth, and Dodger). Charles Stross, because it seems wrong to read his stuff on paper. 🙂Report

There is a comedy bit involving the difference between the new digital phones and the old industrial plastic phones you used to lease from the phone company.

The comedian would pretend to yell something to the effect of “GO COPULATE WITH YOURSELF YOU COPULATING COPULATOR!!!” and then look at his palm and pretended to press a button on it while saying “boop”. The old phones, he pointed out, could be hung up FOR REALS. It even had a bell in there telling you how awesome your hangup was.

I like old phones. They were designed practically, by people who realized that a device intended for verbal communication should be able to reach both your mouth and your ear. The designers of modern cell phones seem to have forgotten this, perhaps because they prefer communication 2 b ntirely n txt.Report

I worked for AT&T for a short while (before my career went to hell) and they used to tell stories about the old Western Electric days. The final quality test on those old phones was a drop onto concrete from a height of two stories. The case might break but they were expected to still work. Try that with your cell phone.Report

Yes, I still buy books on actual paper. I find it easier to read. Also, given that most of my books come from the library and I know some good used bookstores for when there’s something I reread often enough to want to buy it, paying a couple hundred (or more) dollars for an e-reader which I then have to pay to download books onto doesn’t seem worth it. And I’m not worrying about breaking something that expensive whenever I carry it around with me.

And there’s a 0% chance that whoever’s selling it can change their mind on some copyright issue and delete my physical books from my shelf, which is also a big plus.

Anyway, found Cold Days on Amazon for $19, which is insanely low for a hardcover. I’m understanding why some of the big bookstore chains are going out of business.Report

Can I cram the kindle down in whatever space I can manage to find in my luggage?

They’re very flat, so you put them at the bottom and cram everything else on top of them. It takes up much less space then the three or four books I’d usually have packed for a week-long business trip.

From personally experience, 250 lbs on the kindle screen (via heel) is enough to break the screen.

Dropping it from table height? No.

They are rather sturdy. Also, I’m gonna be blunt on the rest: I have never, ever, EVER in my life viewed a book as an emergency fire starting tool. I actually have one of those, and it works a lot better than a book – -since a book is gonna fuel a fire for about a minute, which is kinda useless. Starting the fire is hard, not finding stuff to burn. (Firesteel is awesome).

As for taking it on trips — sure. I take mine to the beach. It’s slightly smaller than a hardback and thinner than most magazines. The battery lasts for weeks if you turn the wireless off. It’s best read in direct light. Like sunlight.

Also, mine is well organized. Although I wish Amazon would release software for it so I don’t have to use Calibre or the Kindle’s own interface.Report

James Hanley, they fit nicely inside a zip lock bag; my son read his inside a bag while in the bath.

And while it’s sturdy, the previous iteration did get damaged when his backpack got backed over. Not broken, just damaged.

He’s also got the G3 access to gmail and wikipedia pretty much anywhere; son also used in in lieu of a cell phone while attending school in Alaska. Call his gmail, leave him a message, got transcribed and emailed to him.Report

Mike–I don’t waste money on expensive books, because I do drop them in the bathtub.

Morat–35 degrees and raining after snow. Misjudged burn rate on new stove and ran out of fuel. Hungry and in need of warm food. The problem wasn’t sparks, it was lack of dry tinder. Didn’t have the paraffin fire sticks on that trip. Dean Koonz burns well, gets finger-size sticks burning, larger stuff follows, warm breakfast gives us the calories to make a long trudge out that day. Best use of Dean Koonz ever. Ev. Er.Report

I have two really good stories about Rob, both of them hilarious, and both of them embarrassing, but neither of which I will type out here. Nob, if I ever run into you at the Draught House or Crown & Anchor, I’ll tell them to you.Report

This on the Trayvon Martin case isn’t a new one, but it still grates at me, especially for where such crap is being said. It’s as if the writer completely forgot that *actual cops* (y’know, those people in uniforms that draw their paychecks from tax dollars) assault & kill people that did nothing wrong. Out of sight, out of mind I guess.Report

It's funny how browsers I think are a thing (specifically Vivaldi and Brave) don't even register on this list. Goes to show my techie bubble.

Browsers used to have better names. Netscape was brilliant. What the heck is a Firefox? (It's "Firebird" with IP considerations is what it is.) Chrome? Edge? Edge? Come on.

It's amazing how quickly Chrome accomplished what Firefox never did. It just goes to show the power of corporate muscle. When Google announced they were creating a browser I thought it was kind of dumb. I was wrong.

People say Firefox is better than Chrome now but I just can't get into the groove of it. Chrome doesn't work right on one of my computers and I use Firefox on it. it's passable, but I wish Chrome worked on it.

With Internet Explorer being replaced by Edge and Edge being Chrome-based, that means may be looking at 3 of the top 5 and 85% of desktop browsing occurring through Chromium browsers. That's concerning.

The ship's presence, he speculated, might have been related to the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Did Trump tweet anything about this, you ask?

The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia. We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian “Skyfall” explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!

As some of you know, I lost my father two weeks ago. My mother called me that Friday afternoon and said, in not such direct words, that “you better try to get up here if you can.”

I did, but I was too late. But in the aftermath of it, it was good to be there. My mother and I ate together for two weeks (my brother and his family are coming in later, such are the vagaries of scheduling bereavement leave in a government agency). We cooked some favorite things. My mom roasted a chicken and then laughed ruefully and said “I guess it’ll be harder to use a whole one up now” and the day after that, we made a favorite chicken enchilada recipe given us by a former minister of her church who had lived in the Southwest. And she baked a favorite cake of ours (my father was diabetic and we had to be careful about sweets in the house, and also baking was hard while he was so unwell). I think it helped, maybe?

There’s a German word, Kummerspeck, which literally means “Grief-bacon” and is used to refer to the weight you put on while grieving. I had scoffed at that before because the more minor griefs (eg., breakups) I had suffered made me NOT want to eat…..but I know I’ve put on a couple pounds in the last two weeks and will have to explain to my doctor when I go in for my checkup on Tuesday….

And people brought in food – lasagna, and bread, and other things.

And we went out to eat lunch a couple times; before my father’s health failed so much going out to restaurants was a favorite thing and my mom hadn’t been able to do it, really, for six months or more while he was needing her care.

When I spoke to her today after I got home, she noted that even though she had told the ‘church ladies’ who do bereavement lunches she didn’t want them to go to the trouble for the memorial service this fall (we have some people with some specific dietary concerns coming), someone did call her back and suggest a dessert-and-coffee reception before the service and I urged her to have them do that – I have fixed things many times for funeral lunches at my own church and it feels very much like it’s one kindness I can do for the family, and having a piece of cake or a few cookies may make small talk easier in a time when it’s going to be hard.

I admit I always rolled my eyes over the “how to relate to your weird dumb relative who isn’t like you” pieces, or, worse, the “you should refuse to spend time with them or try to harangue them into your viewpoint over the Thanksgiving table” pieces, because my family has a lot of….different…..people in it, and we’ve always managed. You talk about other stuff, that’s all. You talk about how a favorite team is doing or the funny things someone’s kids are doing or you share memories….

Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire financier and accused sex trafficker, is dead by suicide, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials told NBC News he was found at 7:30 a.m. ET at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York and that he hanged himself.

Epstein accuser claims she was ordered to have sex with prominent men

He was transported Saturday morning from the Metropolitan Correctional Center to a hospital in Lower Manhattan. Upon arrival, he was in cardiac arrest, people familiar with the matter say.

Epstein, 66, was being held on federal sex trafficking charges.

He was arrested July 6 in Teterboro, New Jersey, as he returned from Paris on a private jet.

He had pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.

The indictment on his case showed that he sought out minors, some as young as 14, from at least 2002 through 2005 and paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for sex at either his Manhattan townhouse or his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, federal prosecutors revealed last month.

Epstein was charged with one count of sex trafficking conspiracy and one count of sex trafficking. He faced up to 45 years in prison if found guilty.